


More Like, Real(ization) Armstrong's

by MonCoeur



Category: Space Force
Genre: F/M, Feelings Realization, Fluff and Humor, Jealousy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-06
Updated: 2020-06-06
Packaged: 2021-03-03 22:33:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,405
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24563179
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MonCoeur/pseuds/MonCoeur
Summary: Erin comes to terms with why she is so jealous when she sees Duncan talking to the new girl working at Meal Armstrong's.
Relationships: Erin Naird/Duncan Tabner
Comments: 4
Kudos: 35





	More Like, Real(ization) Armstrong's

Behind the counter there was a new girl working, likely hired to fill the spot made when she'd been fired. It wasn't surprising except that it was a girl Erin had never noticed around base before. Honey-blonde hair in a wispy french braid and large glasses she guessed were probably not for necessity, but decoration, she stood straight at her post, enraptured by whatever it was Duncan was telling her.

“I can't believe it's true,” she was saying, “That takes a lot of guts. Were you scared?”

Crossing her arms and not expecting much from his reply, Erin rolled her eyes before focusing on Duncan.

“Scared? I was just doing my job,” he drawled, his usual mildly clueless expression in place. For Duncan, things were just that simple, “Why would I swear an oath if I weren't willing to stick to it?”

An actual question, and Erin might have rolled her eyes again if soft serve girl hadn't leaned toward him, hadn't honest-to-God batted her fake eyelashes at him.

“Standing up to such a superior officer, though? Couldn't have been an easy thing to do,” she said, eyes sparkling.

“Well, it wasn't hard,” Duncan's head tilted, his universal sign that he wasn't quite following, “You just have to plant your feet.”

Since he hadn't noticed her yet, she pressed her lips together to keep in a laugh that would give away her presence. Was it a crime to want to wait and see the moment the girl realized that there wasn't much going on in Duncan's unimaginative brain?

“Wow,” the girl said instead, her blossoming smile and lack of follow up telling Erin she might actually be impressed.

Gaping, Erin tried to telepathically get through to this girl that Duncan had literally just been talking about _standing_. Nothing noble, no deeper meaning, just the physical action of using two feet to stay in an upright position.

Duncan did that thing where he tried to hide his growing smirk by ducking his head a little, and then he started to take a step back. Erin was ready to relax her investment in this interaction until ice cream girl looked like she was gearing up to say something that would reel him in again.

“You thinking about serving any other customers yet, or what?” Erin strode forward, surprising even herself with how loud she was, “I'm melting over here.”

“Erin Naird!” Duncan announced in a way someone could accurately describe as jubilant. It was too bad town criers didn't exist anymore, because Duncan would have made a good one.

Next followed a thrill of immense satisfaction for not only the enthusiastic greeting he gave her, but for french braid girl's reaction to it – an analyzing frown.

“Hi, Duncan,” she took another step closer to him just to see if she could make new girl's frown more pronounced.

“Erin, this is Sadie,” he introduced, formal and proud of the knowledge he had to share, however useless as it was, “This is her second shift at Meal Armstrong's.”

“That's great,” her sarcastic reply wasn't wasted on Sadie the way it was with Duncan, and maybe that's why she continued, “Can I get chocolate banana on a cone? If you don't remember where they are, I can point them out for you.”

Sadie's eyes narrowed, but Duncan beat her to replying with a doofy one of his own.

“Erin used to work here. If you forget where anything is she would definitely be a great person to ask,” he told Sadie, although his crinkly-eyed smile was purely Erin's to enjoy. Duncan's genuine assumption that she meant well was enough have her feeling bad for only saying that in an attempt to make Sadie look dumb.

“Oh, Erin _Naird_? I have heard about you before!” Sadie's following smug statement cemented Erin's justification for not being welcoming in the first place, “Weren't you fired for intoxication-related public indecency?”

“Someone's exaggerating,” she replied, avoiding Duncan's eye with a scowl, “So I was tipsy, sue me.”

“They might. I heard you also poisoned some fruit smoothies.”

Now _that_ was truly ridiculous, and Erin scoffed.

“It wasn't poison, it was vodka.”

During the following pause, Sadie's eyes widened and Erin swore that she could hear the mechanics in Duncan's brain grinding while he tried to piece something together.

“If vodka isn't poison, how come it can cause alcohol poisoning?”

“Good point,” Sadie complimented, smiling blindly at Duncan before finally reaching for a cone and turning toward the soft serve machine. “Duncan was just telling me all about standing up to General Grabaston.”

Sadie finished adding the acai to the cone with a flourish at the top, and Erin bristled when she turned around and looked at him first. She even went so far as to go to hand _him_ her order, and something awful gnawed at her stomach when Sadie _giggled_ , readjusting her focus to Erin.

“Did he get to the part where Space Force is considering replacing him with a cardboard cut out of himself because they think it'll be more effective?” When Erin was hurting she wanted others to know what it felt like. Duncan laughed at first, until he caught up with her meaning. Hurt curved his brow and had the line of him mouth frowning while Sadie outright scowled. Mission accomplished, she thought, suddenly nauseous when she reached for the cone extended her way.

“You've got an eyelash coming off,” Erin said with a sneer. Ignoring Duncan helped make it almost satisfying to watch Sadie suck in a breath and reach up to check with tentative fingertips. One last awful instinct found her grip on the cone slacking, and she let it slide from her hand and land on the ground with a crunch and an insincere, “Oops.”

With no real farewell or any spared glance toward Duncan, Erin turned in place and strode away, her head held high.

What was _wrong_ with her? Sure, she'd selfishly wanted Sadie to understand that Duncan wasn't all that impressive, but she hadn't meant to actually hurt his feelings.

Just another example of how publicly indecent she could be, she figured, and this time she couldn't even blame it on alcohol.

Something like guilt started burning at her chest, itching at the back of her throat. Now out of sight of the stupid stand, Erin chose a large cement planter to the side of the walkway and sat down. Back pressed against its side, legs drawn up so she could look her arms around her shins and set her chin on a knee, she sulked.

What did it matter how highly someone else might think of Duncan? Even if it was obvious that there was nothing inherently impressive about him, other people were allowed to think differently. Erin considered the possibility that Sadie had been playing along just to make fun of him, but she hadn't been the one who insulted him, had she? Her own comment had negated any justification she could try to make for herself. Normal people weren't mean to someone they meant to look out for.

And that's why she got involved in the first place, right? To save Duncan from some vapid girl who didn't understand him?

An approaching shadow distracted her from taking the last step toward a certain self-realization, and Erin glanced up with a scowl to try and scare them away. She found wary surprise instead, because Duncan stood over her, dark eyes intent and holding a fresh acai cone.

“She thought you were my ex,” he said, holding out the cone.

Forgetting her initial instinct to decline something she knew she didn't deserve, she clambered to her feet and accepted it in favour of pouring all her energy into an appropriately emphatic, “What?!”

“Yeah. She asked how recently we broke up. Thought it must have been yesterday or something, with how possessive you were,” Duncan elaborated, only clarifying something after a moment of scalding silence, “Her words.”

Scoffing because that was just – well, how anyone could think that they – and if she couldn't string together one clear thought about it how could she possibly hope to verbally convey how ridiculous that assumption was?

“Erin,” Duncan waited until he knew he had her attention, the timbre of his voice a precursor to one of his patented straightforward questions, “Were you jealous that I was talking to her?”

“Jealous?” Erin's voice squeaked, but she couldn't brush it off because even if she felt ridiculous, it was undeniable. That one word could easily encapsulate all of her awful behaviour over the last few minutes, but admitting to that also meant admitting to -

“Oh my god!” she squeezed her eyes shut and tried to hide behind her acai cone, the pit of her stomach bursting with butterflies, “I was _so_ jealous of her!”

One glance up showed her that Duncan appeared as startled about her confession as she felt about realizing it in the first place.

“Really?”

Erin avoided confirming it.

“I'm sorry about the cardboard cut out thing. It's not true, I don't know why I said that,” she admitted, humiliated enough at this point that she might as well get her full apology over with.

“You said it because you were jealous,” Duncan helpfully pointed out, his accent a little more pronounced, like he was please but unsure if he should be, “Does that mean you like me?”

“I didn't know, I just thought I liked that you liked me!” Erin explained, wide eyes and restless. This wasn't the sort of conversation she thought she'd be having with Duncan ever, let alone _today_.

“So...” he had a hard time following when she talked around her meaning like this.

“She was just so annoying, thinking you were just being noble and brave. It's not about any of that for you,” she cringed when he frowned, and licked at her lips before trying to explain herself better, “You just, you were doing your job and you're loyal to Space Force and it doesn't matter to you to stand up to someone who thinks they should be above the rules, because everything is so straightforward for you. Everyone should follow the rules. Everyone should be treated the same. It's not a moral issue for you because it's just a simple truth. You're an _actual_ good person, Duncan.”

“I think I still would have tried to stop him from coming in even if he showed his ID,” he seemed either uncertain of her high praise, or worried that she was wrong about him.

“That just means you don't like bullies,” Erin responded, half-laughing and fueled by adrenaline.

“You sounded a bit like one back there with Sadie,” Duncan frowned, “You didn't drop your acai accidentally, did you?”

“No,” she admitted, shamed. This was it, wasn't it? After only just realizing and before anything happened, he has seen a true moment of how petty she could be and he wasn't going to want to have any part of it.

“I like that you're funny,” he said, straightening his shoulders, “I like that you're not afraid to say what you're thinking. I like that you make _me_ think, make me want to learn more. I don't think I like when you're mean. But - ”

As breathtaking as it was to hear that he'd liked anything about her, she waited, still sure that he'd end with simple disapproval. But Duncan wasn't done surprising her.

“I get it. Every time you talked about that guy you were seeing I wanted to punch in his face,” his momentarily dark expression lifted quickly, “but I didn't, because that's wrong.”

“I know, I - ” she huffed, “I get it now, why it bothered me. My feelings are no excuse to be mean to everyone you talk to, or like, or whatever.”

Standing still in front of her, his shoulders relaxed in the space of a blink, “Your feelings, huh?”

Unrepentant but self-conscious, Erin shrugged her reply.

“You really think I'm a good person?”

Unable to take her eyes off him, she nodded.

“Don't let it go to your head, though,” she warned, weakly trying to undermine how big of a deal this entire conversation was.

“Can't help it,” Duncan answered, taking one step closer. Lips curving slight enough that she knew the smile was for her and no one else set her skin to tingling, had her wanting to sway forward and give her own eyelashes a flutter. Not that it would accomplish anything when he was already looking at her like he had no intention of ever looking away, “Not used to getting compliments from a girl as pretty as you.”

Tall and good-looking, earnest and kind, – and the smooth baritone of his voice didn't hurt either – Duncan rendered her speechless enough that the only thought she could consider was how impossible it should be for one guy to have every single thing going for him. Aware of how close he was, Erin had to remind herself to breathe. Idle thoughts mused about soft lips and dark eyes, her heart thudding so loud she could feel it down to her toes and into her fingertips. Still, none of that compared to the way the world screeched to a breathless halt when it became clear that he was leaning toward her.

Head tilting back to keep a better, heavy-lidded watch of his slow, intentional progress, Erin was entranced when his parted lips hovered a couple of inches away from her own. Just before she could muster the courage to close the gap and put an end to this electric anticipation, Duncan turned his head and moved, tongue catching the trail of warming chocolate banana acai that had dripped down the side of her cone. Following it up, his lips sucked at a spot on the side, just above the lip of the cone, preventing anything further from dripping in the immediate future.

“Melting,” he commented when he pulled away, licking the last of it off his lips.

“Yeah,” she replied dumbly, not even worried that Duncan might understand this time that she was definitely talking about herself.

“Can I take you out for dinner tonight?” he asked, with the mouth-watering confidence of someone who had no doubts about their chances.

“Please,” Erin accepted. And maybe her answer was slightly breathy and a little overzealous but it had Duncan smiling, and that was definitely one of her favourite things about him.

**Author's Note:**

> Thoroughly enjoyed this show and I thought these two were charming. Sometimes you can't stop the little ideas!  
> Hope you enjoyed it!


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